"Lonesome Traveler" by Leigh *Shwin* Erickson

Scarlet blood dripping from nicked, war battered blades

Whispering its bearer’s hushed secrets to the earth

Falling as the only tears mourning the slain

The one tribute to those whom the dark persuades

To those who have none who would mourn their passing

Silence flowing like an impassive river

through the now hushed valley, through the quiet field

The sound of whispering blood tears the ripple

in its perfect nothing, their voices shiver

in the seamless mirror of silence amassing

But soon a pebble cast into the glass lake

shatters its fragile surface with cruel harsh waves

the bitter sound of a lone warrior’s sob

sends forth ripples with bleak silence in their wake

his clear voice aching with the essence of grief

Kneeling on a mound of earth he mourns forlorn

Not merely for those killed but for what was lost

Leaning heavily on his still shining sword

Unused, unstained with blood, yet still very worn

his bright sharpened blade still well known by its sheath

A youth, called warrior bearing the scars

of many battles he did not chose to fight

A watcher who follows, who buries those slain

Whose memories trail beyond the silent stars

Whose lessons, forgotten, guide his voiceless way

He has seen many battles, more than is just

Comforted those dying time and time again

His bitter tears a tribute of countless worth

Their bloody rain slaying his soul with their rust

Each tear falling holds a price too high to pay

These tears hold his life, these tears are as his blood

They hold in their spheres his now fast waning soul

Each tear, each tribute reducing his short life

Knowing this he refuses to stay their flood

So fixed in compassion for the dead he’d die

So on he wanders tracing death’s endless trail

Aware of its broad hand on his thin shoulders

Knowing soon he will join all those war has slain

A lone warrior, though long fated to fail

He endures, and fades into the crimson sky